Software are made by teams and collaboration is needed in order to be efficient and to produce quality.

Sometimes we choose to work in programming to deal with the predictable behavior of a machine and not with the messy relationships between humans. But at some point dealing with others is mandatory in order to achieve our work especially with Agile methodologies.

Except if you work for yourself you will have employers and you have to keep in mind that their business is your business. They pay you so their problems are also your problems. Professional programmers collaborate with the managers, business analysts, testers and other team members to deeply understand the business goals. If you do not understand it how can you provide the best solution to the business problems ?

In a development team programmers have to work with other programmers. Do not fall into the “my code, my precious” attitude, it is not helping anybody. Maybe you think that your code is perfect and everyone should do the same. Perfect code does not exist ! Some developers will prefer a strong design over performance and some will prefer the other way around. It is just a matter of perspective. When you build walls around your code and your scope, you are doing harm to the entire system. It can not work as a whole, how can it move forward if one leg refuses to move ? The code of your application is owned by the team, not by the individuals. So code as a team : share your design ideas or your performance ideas, practice pair programming in order to benefit of all its advantages. Write the code in collaboration.

An open-space setup does not make you work as a team, especially if the members are sitting in corners with their backs to each other. Configure your work environment to face each other, this allows you to communicate with efficiency without making you roll your seat all over the open-space. You will also see when one of your teammate is struggling allowing you to offer your help.

Professional developers work with people whether they are from the business teams or their own team. They collaborate to answer the company’s needs and to produce great software.

See you next time of “Teams and Projects“ !

Developers have to estimate the amount of time required to complete their features. This is at the same time a simple and a frightening task because the business depends on them. There is no ultimate way to make correct estimation every time but it is possible to aim for a good evaluation.

But first, what is an estimate in the software development environment ?

In some cases it is a commitment, you must achieve it ! You have to be absolutely certain (100%) to commit yourself into a deadline. Other people will make plan based on your commitments so you definitely don’t want to miss them. Otherwise you will look as a dishonest person and you are doing harm (see Professionalism chapter).

In other cases an estimate is… an estimate ! It is a guess, you do not promise anything and you do not commit yourself. If you already had to quantify the time a development task will take you certainly know how difficult it is. Most of the time there are too many variables in play to make a proper estimation. And most of all an estimate is not a number, it is a probability distribution ! The concept is explains with the following figure (fig. 1).

In this example the task has 50% chance to take 3 days but it can also take 4-5 days or even 10 days (the Murphy’s law is never far away). With a distribution the business has data to rely on for their work and the development team does not have an inconsistent deadline. It is also important not to commit yourself without willing to do, especially if you use the verb “try” (see chapter 2).

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) offers an effective way to convert estimates into probability distributions suitable for the business team and for the managers. When estimating a task 3 numbers must be provided, it is a trivariate analysis :

O : Optimistic Estimate. Everything goes as planned, nothing as come into the way. In the chart example, O = 2.

N : Nominal Estimate. The value with the highest probability, in our example, N = 3.

P : Pessimistic Estimate. Everything goes wrong, very low percentage of chance to append. P = 10.

With these 3 values it’s possible to describe the probability distribution of the task with the following formula :

µ = (O + 4N + P) / 6

µ (mu) gives us the expected duration of the task. For the example this value is equal to 4 days. But this is just an average based on some coefficients and cannot be used as a deadline, it is a hint. Moreover the pessimistic estimate high value increase this average.

σ = (P – O) / 6

In this second formula, σ (sigma) represents the standard deviation of the task. It is a measure to specify how uncertain the task is, it is equal to 1.33 days with our sample data. The higher this value is the higher the risk is.

With the PERT technique the estimate for the task is the combination of the two values : 4 | 1.33. You cannot take one without the other.

Agile methodologies have given us several techniques to estimate tasks within a small development team. You can try a method called Wideband Delphi for example or the Planning poker approach or even the Affinity Estimating technique. All of them are based on agreement to provide meaningful estimates and you can combine them with PERT. To ease the process of estimating it is advisable to transform larger task into several atomic tasks, this way the team can be more accurate.

Professionals developers provide practical estimates, do not make promise they can’t keep and commitments that can’t be meet. An estimate is a probability and not a deadline !

See you next time for “Pressure“ !

Programmers should spend most of their time writing code for their projects, this is their job. But on a 8 hours work day how much time do you actually spend doing this ? In some organization meetings can take a huge amount of your time and you also have to control the amount of focus you have for the day.

Unless you work alone you certainly have to deal with meetings within your company, especially if your team uses an Agile approach for software development. But be careful not to spend your days in meetings, it can kill your daily productivity.

Attending meetings is important in order to follow the life cycle of your project but you are not required in every one of them. In this case you can politely decline the invitation if your presence is not mandatory. It’s no better to be present and play with your smart-phone because you’re bored or because you’re not involved.

There are also some cases where you can leave a meeting. I know it might look rude to do so but it can happen that a meeting goes not as planned and take much more time that you have anticipated. In a situation like this you can politely ask if your presence is still needed and negotiate your exit. There is nothing worst than a meeting without an agenda and/or without a goal, there is no better way to waste time and energy.

If you use an Agile methodology such as Scrum at work you certainly have to do stand-up meetings every day (mostly at the beginning of the day). Each member of the team should answer the 3 following questions :

1. What did I do yesterday ?
2. What am I going to do today ?
3. What’s in my way ?

And no more, each person should be able to answer these questions in less than one minute. With this short and simple meeting you can easily know if your project is on track or no.

During an iteration planning meeting a development team select and reject backlog items for the new sprint/iteration. The estimates (our next chapter) should be done for every candidate item and if possible some of the acceptance tests. The chosen tasks should be clear and ready for the development phase (coding) and this meeting aims to allow the team to briefly discuss over the items.

Iteration retrospective meeting are designed to share what went wrong and what went right during the last iteration and to present demos to the clients/business. It should not extend 45 minutes, 20 for the retrospective and 25 for the demos which are prepared in advance.

Uncle Bob defines two truths about meetings, finding the correct mix between them for your team can be challenging :

1. Meetings are necessary.
2. Meetings are huge time wasters.

Writing code is an intellectual exercise that requires long periods of concentration and can be exhausting for your mind. But your focus is not infinite and can be depleted, if you are familiar with Role Playing Game (RPG) see this as an empty mana pool. Unfortunately unlike in RPGs you cannot drink a potion to recharge your concentration in a blink but you can refill it.

Sleeping is the best way to replenish your concentration, a good night of sleep (7~8 hours) can give you enough concentration for an entire day. Coffee is the developer’s best friend and can definitely help you regain a small amount of concentration for a short amount of time but don’t let this beverage send your focus in the wrong direction.

It’s also possible to partially recharge your mana batteries by taking breaks during your day, it allows you to de-focus. If the weather permits it you can go out for a walk, have a conversation with a friends, even meditate if you want. You can also practice a physical discipline, it also demands concentration but not intellectual focus : muscle focus. This type of focus can help you increase your mental focus and give you mana. Programming is a creative discipline then exposing yourself to other people’s creativity (books, comics, movies, etc…) is also helpful to boost your own creativity.

When producing code you will sometimes encounter “blind alleys”. It means that the path you’ve taken leads nowhere, in other word your algorithm does not what you want, your solution does not answer your need. It’s impossible to avoid every “blind alleys” but it’s important to realize when you are in one of them to back out.

What you definitely want to avoid are software “marshes”, “bogs” or “swamps”. Unlike “blind alleys” they don’t stop you, there is always a way forward that looks shorter than the way back but that is not. Sticking to a bad software design is a typical example of a swamp, the more you advance the harder it is to advance and at the end you end up with a colossal “Technical Debt“ without noticing it. It kills a team’s productivity and can sometimes kills and entire project/company because maintenance has become overwhelming. If you discover that you are in a situation like this you should definitely turn back before it’s too late.

Clean Coders manage their time and their focus to keep their productivity up and running. They also know how to detect traps and know when it’s time to go back.

See you next time for “Estimation“ !